Duane Hanson

Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt am Main
Through January 6

Duane Hanson’s life-size mannequins, so convincing that at first they really seem alive, continue to amaze. His security guard and the cleaning lady could really be museum employees; two fat tourists could be visitors to the show.

This itinerant exhibition, here on the first leg of its tour, includes thirty-one pieces produced between 1965 and 1995. The American sculptor (1925-1996), who created his most important works between the ’60s and the ’80s, worked throughout his career with materials that deteriorated easily; for this reason, many German museums refused to grant loans for the show, and thus most of the exhibited work comes from private American collections.

The artist was typically drawn to the bored heroes of mundane existence and the petty bourgeoisie, like the characters in Old Couple on a Bench (1994) or the 1987 replica of a girl in bikini whose sole interest in life is getting a suntan. Even if their bodies are wellrounded, their spirits seem to be overwhelmed by a tired and desperate anguish.

The figures are nearly always melancholic and dull, their blank gaze is fixed on oblivion, and they seem vacant of any interest in life whatsoever. Hanson’s average joes, tragicomic and good-natured caricatures of the American Way, are conceived with empathy. Moreover, as the artist himself stated, “It’s the human dimension that interests me—the fatigue, a little frustration, the denial. I think that a certain beauty can be found in all of these things.”

Hanson did not only realize caricatures of the common man, however. The first phase of his activity was actually characterized by a detached social criticism, an example of which is Gangland Victim (1967), which reproduced, life-size, a man murdered by drowning, his legs and arms mutilated and a stone tied around his neck.

Hanson did not intend merely to trick the observer or mimic reality with his pieces but, by means of their interpretation, to render the truth even more intensely. This concept is made explicit in the show’s title: More than Reality.




Christian Huther
Translation by Amanda Coulson